Dear Wonderful People
Thank you for anyone who has been checking in on this latest update – include some very sweet guests – wondering if I had disappeared off the face of the earth, considering this has taken me an extra week to hammer out. Perhaps it is that pesky number thirteen at work – was Josie whispering in my ear like she did when canon Anne was number 13 for the exams for Queen's?!
At any rate, it is a relief to have this chapter out for you. Again I am drowning in a sea of verbosity, and I do apologise. My next chapter might well be in the form of a cinquain poem.
Speaking of poems, thank you to all for your lovely comments and enthusiasm for my dip into all those sonnets! I did enjoy those, but we might let the Bard take a little break for a while – mostly!
If any of my particular support crew on this site happen to see a little winking nod to their own work or ideas here, I hope you like it!
As ever, thank you to everyone who is helping paddle this story canoe with me. There are still quite a few rapids ahead!
Best wishes
Joanne x
Chapter Thirteen
Guesses for Truth
Summerside Home for Girls
Summerside, Prince Edward Island
September 1876
The Summerside Home for Girls received its' most recent resident with the subdued, purposeful, respectful air it tried to instil in all its young charges. It would not have coped well with the chattering magpie of seven months ago, but the drab pea hen who now appeared – but for the flash of spark of her hair, if not in her bearing – was perfectly acceptable. The dull grey uniform married perfectly with the dull, grey eyes and gave the overall impression of a shadow, and possibly the figure itself felt just as insubstantial.
Anne thought that Mrs Cadbury would have wept for the considered calm of the quiet halls here as much as for the hospital corners on the beds. She would have dropped to her knees in thanks for the neatly folded uniforms laid out each night in preparation for the day to come, and the synchronised and non negotiable bedtime routine of wash, prayer and sleep. There was no pleading, cajoling or threatening with the withdrawal of supper. There were no bedtime stories. There was assuredly no galloping headless horseman.
The Home prided itself on the opportunities presented to its' girls; no illiterate scullery maids to be farmed out here; only proper ladies' maids in one of the big houses. They were presenting to the world a new, educated working class girl to fill the shops and the tea rooms; the most promising might be governesses or teachers, or go on to nursing in the 'Nightingale' tradition. To this end there was an emphasis on good grammar and diction as much as the creation of a good sampler; everyone must know a little more than their basic figures and rather enough to construct a decent letter of introduction, let alone a signature at the end of it; there was an hour of required reading each day with an emphasis on the classics, though there was always some polite debate as to what the classics actually constituted.
Anne had her own little exercise book for her compositions. And she didn't even have to rely on the gift of a pencil earned by a boy with large, calloused hands in trade for chopping wood up and down the street. She had several of them, and they were soon worn down to the stubs; it was the only tiny, flickering flame of hope and interest and life she experienced in the otherwise smothering blanket of joylessness.
Miss Katherine Brooke was one of three teaching staff from the large, distinguished and financially well endowed High School on the other side of the town to share duties here, and who made the journey twice a week to oversee the educational needs of the girls in the Home. She couldn't quite say why she dedicated the extra time and effort to do it; she certainly had enough on her plate if she was going to head off one of the dreadful, hopeless Pringles as Head of English in the foreseeable future. Katherine Brooke was a young woman of clipped words and iron determination; of steel resolve and sharp intellect; and resolutely, defiantly unimaginative. Perhaps others might have imagined that a girl orphaned herself at age seven, with only the indifferent, if not downright begrudging, attentions of an avaricious uncle and his family thereafter, might have found herself drawn to assisting others in a similar situation; particularly those at the very same institution she herself had grown up in. Katherine Brooke would certainly never have owned to it, and would have laughed scornfully if anyone had suggested such sentimentality. She did it for the experience and the additional pay from the rather generous - if overly pious – Home benefactors, and nothing more. Although if one of the Home girls did occasionally best one of the Pringles on an exam from time to time, through the benefit of her own tutorage, then that was an additional and edifying bonus.
Now Katherine Brooke sat this Saturday morning and marked compositions with the same swift strokes with which she tackled most aspects of her life. Much of the work of the girls here was adequate if uninspired, and yet an 'adequate' standard for an orphan was rather its own little victory. She now paused, fairly perturbed, by the exercise book before her; her bushy black brows ascending on the long journey to her high forehead, and her unusual amber eyes were round in uncharacteristic astonishment.
"Whom, pray tell, is Anne Shirley?"
The girl of fifteen or so, herself also a past resident of the Home and now Katherine Brooke's hapless, generally fearful and somewhat reluctant current protege, having finally embarked on her own teaching qualifications, quailed at the tone coming from the redoubtable older girl – who seemed in so many ways a middle aged woman already - on the opposite side of the table.
"Anne Sh-Shirley is one of the new girls, Miss Brooke. Come over all the way from Hopetown. Nova Scotia, mind!"
"'Anne Shirley is one of the new girls to arrive to us from Hopetown,' is how we might explain ourselves, Miss Baker. No wonder you are taking your qualifications in mathematics and not English."
"Yes, Miss Brooke."
"She arrived from the asylum at Hopetown, you say?"
"Yes, Miss Brooke."
Katherine Brooke frowned to herself. Margaret Cadbury's girl.
"And why have I not even seen her these three weeks since the term began?"
"She… she has been here all the while, Miss Brooke. You're not likely to miss her. She has completely red hair."
There was a notable pause.
"I cannot even fathom where we failed regarding your grammar, Miss Baker, let alone your deplorable disinterest in your vocabulary. I know nothing of a girl with red hair. Besides which her hair color, red or otherwise, is clearly immaterial."
"No, Miss Brooke. I mean – yes, Miss Brooke. That is, her hair is covered by the cap the girls wear, Miss Brooke."
"So then, obviously, she would have precious little red hair to display by means of identification in the first place, Miss Baker."
"I would say… ah… yes, Miss Brooke."
Katherine Brooke's sigh would have been despairing, if she was one given to such excesses.
"Miss Baker?"
"Yes, Miss Brooke?"
"Fetch me Anne Shirley."
Anne and Gilbert made the train by mere minutes; their breathless lunge towards the carriage would have encouraged irrepressible, knowing laughter but for the sad matter of their mission. There were, unsurprisingly, few passengers at this lonely hour, and those already settled were hardly pleased to see them.
Gilbert looked around and then indicated his hand towards the window with its cluster of two seats either side; he raised his dark eyebrows in question to Anne before gaining her nod of ascent; already they had disputed over payment of the cab fare and the train tickets, and he didn't even want to rehash the tussle when he offered to carry her carpet bag, only to be given a panicked glare and general mutterings that it was delicate and she was the only one who could manage the wayward handles.
"Well, small wonder, Anne. It's falling apart! It must be as old as you are!"
"It is," she responded huffily, most effectively silencing him on that front.
They settled down gratefully and divested themselves of coats, gloves and hats, placing them and their bags on the spare seats beside them, quite certain that no one would come to want to claim them. Anne had recovered somewhat from her earlier upset; her face was pale and her eyes disconcertingly large and limpid, but they did not appear quite so haunted as before; then he chanced a glance at himself through the window's reflection as the train pulled away and started in mild horror, and momentarily forgot all about Anne's appearance in his own desperate attempt to straighten tie, jacket collar and, naturally, inevitably, his hair.
He caught her little smile at his efforts when he turned back to her, and he rolled his eyes, and a little of the tension seemed to break between them, like the welcome relief of the smattering of rain after the build up to a storm.
"Thank you so much for coming with me, Gilbert," Anne ventured after a moment, her voice a little tremulous but still holding firmly to the words.
"You're very welcome, Anne, though I can't say as I gave you much choice, really," he flushed slightly, remembering his dogmatic insistence, fed by his own panic. "I hope you don't feel that… that I, well, overreached myself."
She was all eyes at this remark; she noted his flush deepen even as it fed her own. Then she smiled sweetly and shook her head.
"I can't say as I was behaving or thinking very rationally at any rate myself," she shrugged her slight shoulders. "Katherine would most definitely have not approved!" she allowed her smile of chagrin.
"I think even your Katherine Brooke would forgive you this one particular instance," Gilbert offered a tentative smile of his own.
"I wouldn't be so sure. You don't know Katherine!"
Gilbert could have replied, with some spirit, that he didn't know much of anything anymore, and had to work to stop the automatic, accompanying frown forming. Instead he searched her face, trying to read his answers there to questions he didn't know if he had the leave to ask.
"This will all be a terrible overreaction, and Katherine will be fine, I'm sure of it," Anne determined, clearly as much for herself as for him. "She wouldn't allow it to be otherwise!"
Gilbert nodded slowly and he hoped encouragingly, but was torn between offering false hope and having her prepare for the worst. Anne read it in his pained expression, and fussed momentarily with the hem of her jacket.
"I'm sure this all raises a few… questions… for you," she murmured, eyes downcast.
"Maybe just a few," he kept his tone light. "But you are not compelled to offer me anything you don't want to, Anne."
He meant in relation to answers, to explanations, of course, but it sounded like he was referring to himself and to them together, and he cringed internally at her searching look back to him.
"I'm sorry about our celebratory tea room visit," she blushed again, as if making some sort of connection for herself.
He was too. More than she could ever possibly know.
Gilbert offered a resolute smile of reassurance. "Don't worry, Anne. With me hanging off your literary coattails there will undoubtedly be others."
"It is a very good presentation, though… I'm disappointed we won't go first now."
"It is an excellent presentation, and we shall go last instead and obliterate the memory of all before us – Mr Sanderson included."
Anne's melancholy smile took in his own before pausing to stare out the window; the darkness outside swallowing the specks of light along the route. The gentle rocking along the tracks as the train picked up speed and the dim, subdued, quiet cabin was strangely lulling, returning to the childhood comfort of the cradle, and they both welcomed the new, relative calm. Gilbert could do nothing but watch her, this girl he realised, with an acute ache, he knew but did not really know. Her beautiful face now was as familiar as his own; the lovely, slender perfection of her form was a source of wonder and fascination; her humour and intelligence were a challenge and a beacon. But he only knew the thoughts behind those grave grey eyes when she told him; he only saw what she wanted him to see; he had hoped to breach her walls only to find that there were more walls besides, and he wondered if he had the strength and the faith in himself he would need to persevere on this unending climb to reach her.
Anne turned back to him. "Have you ever been to Summerside?"
Gilbert shifted hopefully in his seat at the question, his hazel eyes lighting. "No, I can't say that I have."
"It's quite a bustling town. It has a very fine harbour, with stunning views out to the gulf. It certainly has its own charms… Not the genteel ones of Kingsport, though, and different again to the upstart charms of her younger cousin, Bolingbroke, I've found."
"I haven't been to Bolingbroke, either. And you are making me feel very insular, Anne, travelling to a part of my own Island I haven't experienced for myself…" he gave a good natured grimace, before searching Anne's face again, weighing the risk of his next question. "Why didn't you ever tell me you had spent time on PEI?"
Anne's furrowed brow indicated she gave this careful consideration. "Because honestly, Gilbert, I haven't spent time on your Island at all. I've spent time in Summerside and in trains to and from. I hardly think that counts."
Gilbert considered this himself, his own brows drawing together.
"I do appreciate that, actually…" he hesitated, and flushed a little as her eyes looked carefully to his. "It hasn't occurred to me in this way before… but that's how it was for my Dad and I, in Alberta. People think of the Rocky Mountains and the wilderness there, but all I ever knew was the sanitorium and our little homestead on the edge of the plains…" His hazel eyes flashed a new understanding to her. "I guess it takes more than being in a place to actually know it."
Anne nodded, her expression softening. "That's why I love Kingsport so. I feel I'm getting to know it. And that it's getting to know me. It's been the first place my entire life that has been my choice to come to. The idea of really knowing probably extends to all matter of things, actually. Circumstances … people…" she drifted on the thought and realised, too late, the hidden implication to her musings. Gilbert was quick to seize upon it.
He cleared his throat carefully. "Are you saying that in relation to yourself Anne? That I… that I have been with you all this time and still not really known you?"
He realised the full audacity of his question the moment he said it, in the sudden hurt that smoked in her grey eyes.
"Are you saying that I've been false to you, Gilbert? That just because you haven't been told every exacting detail of my life before I met you that I've betrayed you in some way?"
Gilbert stilled and his eyes flew wide. How had this conversation derailed so quickly?
"No, Anne… that's not what I meant, exactly…" He tried to backtrack, but realised the feeling of general disquiet refused to budge. "Although you must give me some leeway if I admit to feeling completely – well – bamboozled by the events of the last hour or so!"
That smoke began to spark. "Well, bamboozle away, Gilbert! I do apologise! Next time one of my friends is gravely ill I will be careful to agenda it for you, so as not to offend your delicate sensibilities!"
"Well, now you're being ridiculous!" his countenance had darkened considerably. "And patently unfair! Any fellow in my position would be coming up against these concerns, Anne!"
"And what do you consider your position here to be, Gilbert?"
"Well, then, that's the question, isn't?" he shot back more impatiently than he meant to. "Anne, I don't want to push you. Please know that. I want to respect your privacy. I just feel that I'm blundering about in the dark here, and you have the match in your hand, and you still don't know whether to strike it for me."
Her expression was agonised. "Gilbert… illumination is sometimes…"
"Anne! I refuse to talk in metaphors with you anymore!" he scowled.
"You started it, Gilbert Blythe!"
"Well, all right, but you can finish it, Anne Shirley!"
Anne rolled her eyes dramatically.
"It boils down to a very simple fact, Anne," he quietened his voice after noting the warning, darting looks from several nearby passengers, but he was still clearly frustrated. "Do you trust me? Do you trust me with more than trading Shakespeare quotes, much as that is entirely wonderful and diverting in itself? Or am I just here of my own stupid and misguided volition, not even trusted to… well, to even carry your bag!"
Anne's cheeks bore the pink of her mortification. Her own anger, which she was trying her very best to beat back down, was tempered only slightly by his almost amusing flash of pubescent petulance.
"I pray in every way that Katherine is much recovered by the time we get there," Anne glowered admirably. "Because I cannot wait for you to come up against her, Gilbert Blythe!"
Gilbert's lips formed a thin line of annoyance.
Anne opened her mouth to give another quick rejoinder, but closed it just as swiftly. Her eyes burned in her face which was now flushed with the heat of their unexpected exchange. Her passionate response was altogether too disconcerting for him just now, in the close confines of the carriage.
"I'll see if there's any tea being served to bring back before they close the dining carriage," he offered in a tone of affronted calm, rising abruptly. "I'll make sure they save some extra sugar for yours, Miss Shirley."
He turned with a mocking arch of his brow, but not before being treated to the unexpected satisfaction of seeing Anne's jaw drop in indignation.
Gilbert stalked out of the carriage and right through to the dining carriage, just making it in time for last orders. He gave and paid for his request and then sought refuge on the bridge connecting the carriages, holding onto the railing as the train careered in the darkness, welcoming the sharp, cold air as it blasted some sense into him.
What had he just done back there? He adored this girl beyond measure; this girl who was beautiful and brave and brilliant. He wanted to take her in his arms even as she spat fire at him just now. He wanted to be her noble hero in this endeavour but was just proving himself to have been as base and coarse and clueless and any of Shakespeare's fools. And she was right. He hated not knowing these things about her.
Why did he hate it? He let out a long breath into the night. Before he could investigate his feelings any further – let alone hers – there was an impatient knock on the window; his order was ready.
Gilbert returned, determined to walk a fine line between courteously contrite and last gasp grovelling, only to find Anne was nowhere to be seen. Gilbert halted in bewilderment. He absolutely had the right carriage – even if he had misjudged the number of carriages, here was sleeping evidence of those passengers he recognised, but he stood looking down, incredulous, at their empty seats. Their bags and coats were gone and Anne along with them.
His mind spun into a quick and disturbing freefall. She had been harassed by some stranger in his absence and was forced to flee. Someone reprobate had snatched their bags and she had taken off in dangerous pursuit. She had stormed off herself in her anger and couldn't find her way back. Or, worse of all, she had finished with him and had left him forever.
He held onto the little tray with their cups stupidly, only just resisting the urge to fling it to the ground and run about shouting her name. He looked around wildly, through the window and into the partition to the next carriage, which housed some private compartments. And then he saw that wonderfully reassuring flash of red; Anne poking her head out of a doorway, straining to have him see her, beckoning him with her hand and her excited expression.
Gilbert moved very swiftly now, through the carriage and to the next one.
"Anne! You put the fear of God into me then!" that aforementioned fear was making his words unintentionally ragged.
"Here, Gilbert!" she had the door to a private compartment opened, and she was tugging on his sleeve trying to get him inside.
"Anne, what are you doing?" he hissed. "These are the private compartments! We shouldn't be back here!"
"Be quiet and get in, Gilbert, before anyone sees you!" She pushed at his strong, defined back, which would have indeed been an immovable object despite her irresistible – in every way – force, but for the tray he was still juggling, upsetting his balance, and she was able to push him before her, closing the door behind them and locking it with a flourish.
"There," Anne smiled, almost dusting her hands together in job-well-done fashion, her eyes brightened by her exertions and her voice resonating loudly in the hush of the compartment, which even blocked the rattle of the train to something approaching a low hum.
Indeed he couldn't hear much of anything above the blood thundering in his ears.
"Anne!" he looked aghast at her and then around them to the empty compartment. "Are you out of your mind? We can't be here… alone… together!"
He might as well be the one in maidenly panic at these proceedings, watching as she looked up to him with a wry glint.
"Who's to see us? And at any rate, you're missing your apron, Mr Blythe," she smiled knowingly, and took the tray from his unresisting hands.
Caught offguard, he smiled in surprise at her reference to his Lambs induction get up.
"I thought you didn't know about that. Wasn't that the time when you weren't speaking to me and wished you could hack me into little pieces?"
Her smile grew wide and she gave a delicious arch of her brow. All he could do was take a long and rather uneven breath in response.
"Anne. We can't be in here!" he repeated, not quite as firmly as before.
"Gilbert, I trust you."
Gilbert felt his eyes were out on stalks. "Anne, let me assure you, this was not the kind of trust I was referring to!"
She colored in understanding, but her tone held firm. "Isn't it? Aren't they really one and the same when it comes to it? I trust you with the safety of my person absolutely, without compunction. Perhaps it's time I really did trust you with some of my stories, too."
Her look was unaccountably tender, and his heart hammered so loudly it was its own percussion section.
Gilbert thought he would perhaps awaken now, to find himself cast back to his desk in his dorm room, and it really was Charlie at the door, perhaps to inform him he was leaving Redmond for the Foreign Legion. For nothing could be as wondrous strange* as these words from her under these circumstances.
Gilbert swallowed hard. "Anne…"
She motioned him to come and sit, along the padded bench seat, their bags and coats lying on the other opposite, with the tray set on the low table in the middle. He was fleetingly grateful it was at least not a sleeping compartment.
"How did you get in here?"
"I was busily plotting your downfall by way of sharp, cutting retort upon your return…" she handed him his now lukewarm tea with an utterly disarming smile. "I was very aggrieved to find I couldn't come up with any. I came to thinking that you were right. And that you deserved better."
He flushed at this. "Anne, I behaved very poorly just before. I don't deserve better."
There was that look from her again, and it silenced him, not because he didn't have further objections, but because he stared into her eyes and his brain forgot to function.
"So… I was waiting and the conductor was coming to check tickets… he saw I was alone and he was concerned. Before I could disavow him of his presumption he was whisking me back here and opening up one of the empty compartments for me – saying he would look the other way and I could stay here, uninterrupted, till we reach Summerside. He'll even give a warning knock ten minutes before we arrive."
She gave a delighted grin that squeezed at his insides.
"Anne, I think you're forgetting that he gave you permission to stay here, to ensure your safety and safeguard your reputation. If he finds me happily camped out too he'll take that as an immediate and understandable affront to all his efforts."
"Gilbert, he doesn't know about you! Didn't he check your ticket further up the train?"
"Well, yes… he caught me in the dining carriage."
"So there, then! All's well."
Whether it would end so he was unsure, but he had to admit the cosier, infinitely more private confines of the compartment were as appealing as the new light to her eyes and smile.
"Anne…" he offered up his very last line of defence. "I wouldn't want you to appear compromised in any way."
Anne's smile was terribly bemused.
"As opposed to leaving Redmond together under cover of darkness earlier?"
Gilbert groaned with such agonised gusto it made them both laugh.
"Don't remind me! Good 'ol Mr Fitz. He at least might be on my side at the trial."
Their laughter drifted towards a quiet chuckle, before ending altogether on a current of communion and calm.
They sipped their tea. It was a surreal echo to even earlier that day, and a mocking reminder of what they could have had tomorrow. But despite the possible heartache at the end of their journey, he wouldn't exchange this moment for anything.
Summerside Home for Girls
September 1876
Katherine Brooke watched with interest as the slight, still figure made her way towards her, hands clasped in the way the girls were encouraged; head down respectfully. No wonder she hadn't much noticed her, as this girl bore little resemblance to the description her sometime older friend Margaret Cadbury had made of her. 'Talks incessantly…. disturbingly vivid imagination… prone to flights of fancy… excitable nature fed by luridly adult vocabulary… flashes of occasional temper…' and the addendum, which perhaps had been better borne out; 'dreadful incident… stuffing knocked out of her… tremendous potential needing to be harnessed…'
"You may leave us a while, Miss Baker," Katherine nodded to the older girl who had duly returned with her cargo, and gratefully scuttled off, whilst exacting amber eyes were turned back to the new arrival.
"Anne Shirley, I am Katherine Brooke. "
The girl dropped a small, neat curtsy.
"Indeed, Ma'am. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"I believe we have long bypassed that stage, Anne Shirley, since you have been in my acquaintance these past three weeks. You have been sent to us on the strength of the personal recommendation of my friend Mrs Cadbury. What have you to say for yourself?"
"I am very grateful to Mrs Cadbury and to the administration of Summerside Home for Girls for taking me on, Miss Brooke, and will do my utmost to uphold the ideals set before me and to make myself worthy of the opportunities presented to me."
Katherine rolled her eyes internally at the rehearsed platitudes. Well, this one could certainly string a sentence together when she had a desire to.
"How old are you, Anne Shirley?"
"I am eleven and a half, Miss Brooke."
"And what of your schooling, up until now?"
"There has been little of it to speak of. It has been haphazard and underwhelming, Miss Brooke."
Katherine pursed her lips together lest she bark out a surprised grunt of something approaching a laugh, which may have caused the quaking Miss Baker, if she was still with them, to swoon in shock.
"Has it indeed, Anne Shirley. Well, that would seem to account for the astonishing affront of your spelling here," she indicated to the exercise book before her.
"Yes, Miss Brooke," the answer was not quite so automatic now, and the two growing spots on those pale cheeks attested to as much.
"Are these all your own opinions, written in your own hand, Anne Shirley?"
"Yes, Miss Brooke."
"I wonder then, when you were so clearly instructed to write an analysis of Mr Tennyson's 'The May Queen' as found in your reader, you instead give us a lengthy and unnecessary exploration of his 'The Lady of Shalott.'
"I found the works comparable on a certain level, Miss Brooke, but I find that 'The Lady of Shalott' gives so much more scope for the imagination."
"This has nothing to do with imagination, Anne Shirley, but rather more to do with your wilful disregard for instructions. 'The May Queen' is the prescribed poem. I cannot pass you on this section of your reader until you have addressed it. We may as well do that now."
"Certainly, as you say, Miss Brooke."
Katherine Brooke's eyes narrowed. That response was rather more mulish, and much more in keeping with Margaret Cadbury's opinion.
"Yes, I do say, Anne Shirley, and I trust you will not forget it. I take it you are familiar with the literary techniques employed in 'The May Queen'?"
"Yes, Miss Brooke, and although I admire them and greatly admire Mr Tennyson, I… I cannot admire the poem itself."
Katherine Brooke raised one of her extraordinary brows. "Firstly, Anne Shirley, I am sure England and Ireland's Poet Laureate these last twenty years greatly appreciates your admiration for his undertakings. Secondly, I asked not your personal opinion of the poem, but a comment on matters of form and style."
"Well yes, Miss Brooke, but Mr Tennyson's form and style are only ways in which he painfully accentuates the coming death of little Alice."
Painfully accentuates indeed. The girl had a better vocabulary – and certainly a better grasp of things – than the erstwhile Miss Baker.
"How so, Anne Shirley?" Katherine pressed.
Anne fought a little war with herself. She had been resolutely determined to move around as quietly and unobtrusively as possible since her arrival at Summerside. For the first time in her life she had not immediately attracted attention – she looked the same as all the other girls, with her uniform and cap, the latter shielding the one thing people always noticed about her. There had been a certain relief in conforming her personality to this new environment; quiet days spent in quiet pursuits. It only required use of a quarter of her brain and nothing of her heart, which was only a shell left remaining anyway, or a lonely one-handed drummer without the one it had beat in time with.
It had not been easy, submerging herself in this way, but rather she learn to breathe better underwater or else drown completely.
Anne swum reluctantly to the surface; she eyed the shore.
"Mr Tennyson sets up little Alice as a vain and uncaring creature, Miss Brooke – she is obsessed with her role and status as the May Queen; she thinks herself better than the other girls and that she looks finer than they. The rhyme and repetition of the last line of each stanza - 'For I'm to be Queen 'o the May, mother, I'm to be Queen 'o the May' is like a taunt she gives over and over, like a boast. She is hateful to the boy, Robin, who loves her, and she gives him 'sharp looks' and the fright of his life thinking she is a ghost running past, but she…" at this Anne sidled over to the table to better peruse the reader, "she even says 'they call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say'. And in the next stanza she continues 'They say his heart is breaking, mother – but what is that to me?' Her actions towards him are selfish and cruel, but she is convinced it doesn't matter – that he doesn't matter - and that other boys will show interest in her anyway. The poet almost doesn't want us to like her, and if we don't like her how can we care for her Fate? It seems a contradiction. Meanwhile the ballad is full of the images as if foretelling her death – Alice is in her white May Queen dress and even believes Robin thinks her a ghost… the valley she mentions seems to me like 'the valley of the shadow of death', like the psalm **… and Alice even hints about 'eternal sleep' when she says earlier 'I sleep so sound at night, mother, that I shall never wake.' And then, she takes another full half of the poem to actually die… over and over again about it being the last New Year she'll ever see, and the 'frost on the pane', and her 'mouldering grave'… and its horrible, and I hate it!" ***
Anne dashed at the tear on her cheek, her face flushed, her words come as a breathless torrent, a great gush, as if indeed she had to get them out before being swamped again by the wave coming for her. She had never spoken about a poem or story like this, ever; she had never had the opportunity to do so, and felt fearful of giving such opinions even as she fought the exhilaration of releasing them and of them being heard.
Katherine Brooke blinked several times, feeling indeed as if she had been pummelled by a mighty wave. She was not one for overreaction and had a horror of hyperbole, but she knew she had just witnessed an extraordinarily adept interpretation, untutored and overemotional though it was, from a girl of eleven that was the equal to anything given up by her Queen's Academy candidates over at the High School.
"Well, Anne Shirley, for someone who didn't like the work you have rather a lot to say about it. 'The Lady of Shalott' deals with the death of the female protagonist too – why is that death so very preferable to you in comparison?"
Anne started and opened her mouth in surprise. Her grey, teary eyes blinked back the moisture in them. She felt something in her stir, shift, change. She felt the waves crashing around her beginning to subside. She felt a tiny hope within herself; a flame; a flicker.
"Because, Miss Brooke…" Anne stammered, "because The Lady is caught in a curse, and she knows of the curse, and she breaks free of it anyway. And she knows she will die but she is made brave by it and becomes heroic – she is even mourned by Lancelot; instead of Alice the May Queen, who is punished for being 'wild and wayward' *** by her own death."
"Mmm…" Katherine now raised two eyebrows in a reaction that managed to be both bemused and a little derisive. "I see how your preferences are held close to you, Anne Shirley. You'll need to guard against that in the future and learn to be much more even handed in your appraisal."
Anne's eyes were wide. "Yes, Miss Brooke."
"It was a very good analysis, Anne Shirley, if slightly overwrought. I am happy to pass you on it."
Anne paused for an incredulous moment. "Thank you, Miss Brooke."
"And the word is 'foreshadows'; Mr Tennyson tells beforehand of the death of the girl with her white dress and such by 'foreshadowing' it. A useful term. I have noted it here."
Anne was too stunned now to respond except in words of few syllables.
"Thank you, Miss Brooke."
"I will continue to instruct your progress in English and humanities. You must work on your spelling, and according to others, most definitely on your geometry. Here is a copy of the Fifth Reader. You may become familiar with it; I doubt you'll have need of the Fourth Reader for very much longer."
Anne's somewhat shaking fingers reached out for the reader; it might have been an exchange, but it felt like a blessing.
"Th…thank you, most sincerely, Miss Brooke."
"Very well then, Anne Shirley," Katherine gave a curt nod of her head. "I will see you on Wednesday."
Anne lingered momentarily, her eyes newly bright and wondering. She clutched her exercise book and the reader to her chest, bobbed a curtsy and made her way out. As she passed the older girl who had summoned her she raised her bowed head high, her chin ever so slightly tilted.
Katherine watched her and noted the action. It reminded her of another girl of long ago; she of dark hair and dark wayward brows and strange amber eyes. However, Katherine was mindful of the effect even a small, tight, begrudging smile from her might have on hapless Miss Baker, and adjusted her demeanour accordingly.
Anne had thought herself bold and confident, buoyed by the unexpected gift of the private compartment, but now her courage faltered, ebbing away even as they drained the last of the tea and had nothing else to occupy them.
Gilbert had grown quiet too, and she had become very aware of him close to her on the bench seat, trying not to notice his long fingers as he drummed them on his knee. She wanted to begin but still didn't quite know how. And then the train lurched unexpectedly, navigating the corner inexpertly, and it sent Anne crashing as a wave into his arms, and propelled the tray on the table and Gilbert's bag on the opposite seat to beach themselves on the floor in the swell.
Her breathless apology as she stared up into his eyes with his steadying arms around her stirred feelings that had absolutely no place in the private compartment of a train as the midnight hour approached. They leapt away from one another as scalded cats and busied themselves with the damage; Anne lunged after runaway teacups and the upended tray; Gilbert rescued his bag and the various contents that had slipped out.
Anne turned to see him shove back a very weighty textbook; it was hardly her own usual reading material but she could discern the cover well enough, and the question in her eyes startled him when he looked at her, and she saw him blush as fiercely as she had ever seen him.
"I hope you don't sleep with that one under your pillow now…" she tried to joke. "You'd throw your neck out!"
Would that you knew exactly what I sleep with under my pillow, Miss Shirley.
Gilbert tried to smile but it was a rather poor, half hearted imitation of one.
"You must think me incredibly presumptuous…" he murmured, shaking his head disparagingly.
"Of course not. I think it's incredibly… thoughtful of you…" she tried to break through the new lump in her throat. "I just hope we won't have to consult it."
"It was idiotic…" he persisted, sitting back in his seat with an embarrassed thump.
Anne righted the tea things and left them all on the tray by the door. She came around to sit herself beside him.
"When was it?" she asked curiously. "When you wanted to become a doctor?"
"Anne, I think we've long established that the very notion is far off and ridiculous…"
"Gilbert," she chastised gently in return, "I think we have also established that you can give yourself permission to dream…" she fed his words back to him.
He looked to her searchingly.
Would that you knew exactly what I dream, Miss Shirley.
He turned back to contemplate the floor, pausing for a moment, thinking that trust was rather a two-way street. He was asking an awful lot of Anne and giving very little in return. He hadn't discussed any of his future ambitions with anyone except for family… his parents and Uncle Dave… and her. The thought was rather startling; he realised he grouped her with them.
"I guess…" Gilbert began, "that Dad's illness and our time in Alberta made a very big impression, and still resonates, even now. And I have a great Uncle in Glen St Mary, which is a coastal town on the Island overlooking Four Winds Harbour. He has the medical practice there, and I've spent part of every summer for the past few years following him around like an adoring and very unworthy puppy. But I remember…" he suddenly grinned, "that I did always like to know how things worked as a boy, but my interest wasn't so much mechanical as anatomical. How the human body worked… what it did and why… its strengths and its vulnerabilities… Then, during my two years of teaching, which I enjoyed perfectly well, mind… I was encouraging students in their ambitions but not really even thinking of my own. And then it came to me… medicine." He paused mid reflection. "Did you know that Keats trained as a doctor?"
Anne had been listening avidly, and laughed at his unexpected question.
"Really?"
"He was very skilled, apparently, and achieved his apothecary's licence and everything, which meant he could practice as an apothecary, physician and surgeon. But he turned his back on it, even though he would have made him a very comfortable living, and lack of money was a difficulty all his life. It brings up quite the dilemma, actually."
"Science versus Art?" she surmised.
Gilbert nodded eagerly. "A critic once said of him 'It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet'." ****
"That's rather awful!"
"Indeed, very harsh. I respect that his true passion lay in literature, and he was brave enough to follow that decision, in the face of notable opposition from his family and professional mentors. In truth he could have lived his doing good, noble work; comfortable, respected - and forgotten."
"Instead he died a penniless poet at twenty five," Anne completed the thought, 'but will be remembered forever."
Gilbert sighed. "Exactly."
"He could have saved countless lives…"
"But we'd have no Ode to a Nightingale…."
Anne made an aggrieved face. "I don't think I could live without Nightingale. Or Ode to Autumn. Or Bright Star."
Gilbert nodded. "Keats wanted to be remembered. He worried that he didn't leave his mark – but he absolutely did. And I guess I'm attracted to medicine because I want to leave my mark, in a different way... "The idea of fight(ing) disease and pain and ignorance… which are all members of one another. I want to do my share of honest, real work in the world, Anne… add a little to the sum of knowledge that all good men have been accumulating since it began. The folks who lived before me have done so much for me that I want to show my gratitude by doing something for the folks who will live after me…" *****
He looked back at Anne and shrugged his shoulders, a new hint of color to his cheeks.
"I am aware that last bit sounds unbelievably pompous!" he gave a smile, rolling his eyes.
Anne surveyed Gilbert for several moments, her expression unfathomable.
"I think…" she finally offered, with a hint of huskiness which caused his ears to tinge red, "that you are in danger of becoming an extremely good and decent man, Gilbert Blythe."
He smiled slowly at the tremor of a tease in her tone, even as her eyes spoke to him with an earnestness that was altogether too suited to the private compartment of a train as the midnight hour approached.
"Well, then…" he met her eyes and his own voice deepened, and he fought the urge to kiss her with everything in him. "I won't tell anybody if you don't."
Summerside Home for Girls
March 1878
Anne sat in the chair in the corner in disgrace, feeling that she was the most pitiful creature in all the world, her despairing misery only marginally assuaged by the sight and sound of the whey faced, sobbing girl in the corner opposite. The girl didn't even dare to glimpse at Anne herself, who had proven, thought the girl and manifold witnesses, to be a frightful red-haired hellion, with a temper to match her rarely seen tresses, and an unfortunate and (heretofore unsuspected) startlingly accurate aim when holding a heavy book.
Katherine Brooke swept in with a majestic fury, her dark eyebrows hunkered over her amber eyes made blistering by her anger, her lips tight and her expression darkly forbidding. A mere look at the girl in the other corner caused a fresh bout of quivering tears; Anne, with all the pious affront of the not quite falsely accused but of the definitely wretchedly wronged, merely met Miss Brooke's eyes, though her gaze was not quite as unwavering as she may have hoped for.
"This is a most appalling set of circumstances!" Katherine hissed. "Fighting!" she glared at Anne, "and thievery!" she darted another scathing glance at Anne's near hysterical nemesis. "Perhaps in the interests of clarity some explanation is forthcoming?"
"She grabbed and attacked me!" Sadie Mayhew, never shy let alone retiring at the best of times, now began in her own hasty defence. "She howled at me! She clobbered me on the head with a book!"
"And before we investigate this incredible incident, might you explain, Sadie Mayhew, how Anne Shirley here may have come to such terrible and violent behaviour?"
"I believe it to be inherent in her very nature, Miss Brooke," came haughty reply.
Anne wisely made no interjection; Katherine Brooke's reaction showed she was rather unimpressed enough for the both of them.
"A very shaky defence indeed, Sadie Mayhew, though I acknowledge your attempt to explore your vocabulary."
Sadie smiled through her tears in her misguided pride, which was rather the wrong course of action. Katherine Brooke turned with the strike of a cobra.
"I find nothing amusing about this whatsoever, Miss Mayhew! May I explain a few things. Firstly, I find your smug attitude generally deplorable and personally offensive, no more so than in this particular instance. You won't be fit to be kitchen maid in some third rate tearoom if this continues. Secondly, I have been engaged as tutor to guide and assist the young ladies of this establishment – and I include you in that group based on the loosest possible definition – and to instead have to oversee you writing lines as punishment for this earlier scandal is an insulting waste of my time and expertise. And thirdly, your wanton disregard for the possessions of others – in this case Anne Shirley's – demonstrates a lack of moral fibre that I find both puzzling and disappointing. Be certain that I have my eye on you now, Sadie Mayhew, and I had much better like what I see in the future."
Katherine Brooke's diatribe had the desired effect and then some; the girl went off wailing pathetically in search of the materials for her lines.
Katherine turned slowly back to Anne, who had only the most tenuous grip on her own composure.
"Puzzling and disappointing indeed, Anne Shirley."
Anne buried her face in her hands. "I'm so very sorry, Miss Katherine!"
"Anne! What on earth possessed you?"
"I was only looking at my wooden figures, Miss Katherine - as unobtrusively as I could. I have tried to be mindful of your advice to peruse them more sparingly, as a special treat or reward… I thought… I thought that this day would be an appropriate one…" Anne tried with everything in her not to dissolve into hot, angry, bitter tears, for Katherine had an abhorrence of excesses of emotion, and Anne had tested her on that score many times already.
"And then Sadie snatched them from me! She would not give them back, though I cajoled and then even threatened her. She might have dropped and broken them – I was terrified she would, or fling them somewhere! So I grabbed at her and shouted, and then the book was by my bed and I did clunk her on the head with it to stop her, and what's more I'd do it again!"
Katherine's look had shifted from angry to disapproving, but Anne knew that was far worse.
"Anne Shirley! You and that boy! Honestly!"
"Oh, Miss Katherine… I am sorry… but they are all I have of him…" The tears did arrive now, silent and stealthy, dashed away as soon as they were formed.
Katherine Brooke could have argued that some wooden figurines were the least of the problem here – that this long ago comrade, this lone friend, still loomed too large in her consciousness, nearly two years later, and there were upwards of three exercise books full of fevered writings and scribblings and undoubtedly tormented poetry to prove it. When Katherine had first stumbled upon them she was both horrified and fascinated by the lurid adventures they portrayed, of those wooden figures come to life; weaving in and out of high adventure and low humour, written in the style of the authors from which Anne had taken inspiration, with an uncanny ear and not inconsiderable skill. So there had been touches of Swift and Dumas, of Grimm's Tales and Tennyson, and a decidedly uncomfortable and appropriately Dickensian interlude, which seemed to consist of ways in which the blonde boy and the red haired girl devised a series of punishments and penance for a tall, dark haired, sallow-faced villain.
Katherine now almost did sigh in despair, and was not at all pleased with the knowledge of it.
"He would be fourteen or fifteen now…" Anne Shirley mused, her face red and tearstained, but her grey eyes hopeful. "I shall be able to write to him in a few more years…"
"And what exactly would you say, Anne Shirley?" Katherine's disappointment in her made her scathing. "That you have made a fine future for yourself as some bottle washer in a kitchen?"
"No, Miss Katherine… I thought… that is, the idea… of me being a teacher like yourself someday…"
"And do you think they will want me to continue giving such exacting instruction to someone who proves herself unable – and not for the first time – to control her temper and her rash reactions? That this wayward creature flying in the face of all the teachings here in the Home would still be the beneficiary of their benediction? And what of me in all this, Anne Shirley, if you have a thought for anyone but yourself at all? It is a very convenient arrangement for myself, to come and do extra work, and I have ensured I am paid handsomely for it. But if the benefactors of the Home find they are not financing the futures of respectable young ladies, but instead nurturing a veritable nest of vipers, you can be assured you will never see me again. Let alone any hope of a decent career before a blackboard!"
Katherine Brooke's amber eyes burned a hole right through her. Anne gulped, and a new panic mingled with an old dread.
"Miss Katherine… they wouldn't withdraw their support, would they? I couldn't bear it if I was … if I ended up being no better than…" Anne's face was white, and she couldn't even finish the horror of the sentence.
"Well then, Anne, perhaps you can be mindful of that thought next time you are tempted to resort to physical violence."
"Yes, Miss Katherine," Anne responded, in as quivering a fashion as anything Sadie had just offered.
"You must apply yourself resolutely and wholeheartedly. You must make every effort. I will not abide half measures."
"No, of course, Miss Katherine."
Katherine's eyebrows furrowed fearsomely.
"And no more stories."
The request that was not a request hung in the air. Anne took a shuddering breath on it. She would need to pack the stories away… she would need to pack him away. She would need to fold him up as a letter, one of the countless letters to him she could not write, and she would need to fold it and fold it again, small, so very small as to be a speck, to be tucked away, safe and out of sight.
Anne's response was slow and sorrowful.
"Yes, Miss Katherine."
Katherine accepted this with her characteristic firm nod, and then she pursed her lips.
"Writing lines. What a way to mark one's birthday, Anne Shirley."
Anne had decided the day couldn't be any sadder, and gave in to her glum musings.
"I doubt that thirteen will be any more auspicious than twelve was," she murmured with the dire air of one approaching the scaffold.
"You are probably right," Katherine responded in that way of hers; the lips twisted in their fight against a smile.
Anne sighed her own loud and grievous sigh of despair.
Katherine Brooke rolled her eyes not quite so inwardly and fished around in her satchel for a novel, holding it out to Anne without ceremony.
"Here, then," she offered gruffly. "I am sure you will find her to be one of your 'kindred spirits'; she was an orphan with a terrible temper, too."
Anne accepted the book, already looking much loved, and stared at the cover.
"Miss Bronte's 'Jane Eyre'" she breathed.
"It is my own copy, but I am making it yours. Goodness knows you have more need of her now than I do, Anne Shirley."
Anne's eyes were brimming anew as she looked back up, and Katherine immediately frowned and began to make unnecessary adjustments to the room in preparation for her Wednesday class.
"Thank you, Miss Katherine," Anne whispered, too moved to draw upon the effusive sentiments that flooded her.
"Well, then," Katherine was typically terse. "I would start on those lines if I were you, lest you turn on the waterworks and blot all the ink entirely."
"So, Anne," Gilbert had removed himself to the comparative safety of further along the bench seat, ostensibly to stretch his long legs and safeguard their bags from further excitement but really just in highly transparent and possibly ineffectual attempt to put some physical distance between them, removing the resultant temptation alongside it. "Perhaps you'd best tell me about Miss Katherine Brooke, considering your comments about her have me somewhat fearful - and by fearful I mean not unlike a Christian in the Colosseum, waiting for the lions to come out."
"A lamb to the slaughter?"
"That imagery is even more effective," he grinned, "and even less helpful."
"I thought you were finished with the use of metaphors, Mr Blythe?"
"I rescind my former comments entirely," he replied. "I think I may well need the comfort of a metaphor or two."
Gilbert watched as she smiled and then grew serious, the atmosphere in the compartment changing in an instant, and those fingers, he noted with a lump to his throat, had taken to fiddling again.
"Anne…" he reached over to cover her hand with his. "If you think you can trust me, then please, help me to earn it. Let me in, even just a little."
There was a very long pause as he held his breath for her answer, and she watched her hand encased in his. He saw the shimmer of tears on her downcast lashes.
"If I tell you about Katherine then it's like I am telling you everything. I suddenly don't know if I'm ready for that, Gilbert – even for you."
He waited, and clutched her hand tighter.
"Well, only you yourself can decide that, Anne."
She finally, finally, raised her bowed head, to meet his eyes. The dreadful shadows he saw in her own, that she was finally allowing him to see… the depthless pools of uncertainty and even fear, threatened to unman him entirely. What had happened to her to make her look so at the thought of sharing some of herself?
Anne opened her mouth as if to speak, and closed it again.
Gilbert, with an agonised look at her, withdrew his hand, though instead of sliding back again, he moved closer beside her. He didn't want to crowd her, but something in him wanted to impart his support of her, in the only way he could think of in this moment.
Anne gave a soft intake of breath, adjusting her own position slightly to accommodate him. His sleeve brushed hers, his iron shoulder and bicep fighting her for space; his thigh resting firmly against her own. She closed her eyes momentarily at the comforting bulk of him; the heat of his body chasing away the cold she had felt since her eyes had first scanned that telegram.
"Anne," his voice was a little rough, and his breath brushed her cheek. "Forget what you have said, and what I have said, and let us just sit here together. I am just going to sit here patiently and what's more I will attempt to silently. I have nowhere to go but to be here, sitting beside you. If you want to speak, please speak. If you want to rest, please rest. If you want to quote Shakespeare, we'll quote Shakespeare, and never mind what I said before, I will always find it in every way wonderful and diverting with you."
Anne smiled gratefully up at him, staring into the eyes that stared so kindly back to her.
"Thank you, Gilbert."
"You're welcome, Anne," he answered on a breath.
What Anne really wanted to do was something barely within the bounds, such as rest her weary head upon his shoulder. Gilbert felt solid and real as they headed towards the unknown and intangible. He was an anchor in a deep, dark, silent, churning sea. She had learned to fight the current at times and to let it take her during others, but it had been a long, long time since she had anyone helping to keep her afloat; to hold her and keep swimming for her when her own arms had grown so tired.
Anne swallowed with difficulty. Sink or swim? Resist or accept? Guard or trust?
"I came to Summerside when I was eleven…" Anne began so quietly she could barely be heard above the engine and the lull of the train over railway tracks. "I had been sent over from the orphanage in Hopetown, in Nova Scotia. I met Katherine at Summerside. She was a teacher at the High School who worked a few sessions a week there, at the Home. The Summerside Home for Girls, that is."
There was a long, long pause, during which Gilbert thought that might be all he was to know. There was a Hopetown as well? The thought was despairing. After a moment he tested the waters.
"I thought you grew up in Bolingbroke?" he offered as gently as he could.
"I was born in Bolingbroke. When my parents died I was still a very young baby, and I guess I was lucky to be taken in by my parents' former charlady, Mrs Thomas, who had four children of her own and hadn't quite weaned the youngest. She nursed me until I was old enough to feed on my own, and then her husband died, and she couldn't afford me, so she left me at the orphanage." *
Gilbert's eyes widened, but he didn't dare move a muscle, and thought he might forego breathing as well if it was too distracting.
Anne sighed deeply, but it was a sigh of tiredness, he thought, and not of distress.
"I was at the orphanage until I was eight, and then I was fostered out to a Mrs Harrison. She lived up the river from Marysville "in a little clearing among the stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't an imagination. Mr Hammond worked a little saw-mill up there, and Mrs Hammond had eight children. She had twins three times…" ****** Anne paused, to perhaps grimace at the memory of all those little mouths she undoubtedly helped to feed. "She was not … that is, Mrs Hammond was not… not what you would call a sympathetic soul… definitely not a kindred spirit.. Her husband died, and she had to divide up her children amongst her relatives. She certainly didn't want to hold on to me. And so then when I was eleven I came back to the orphanage. I was there for… for… a little while, before being sent across to the Island, to Summerside, to the Home for Girls."
Gilbert tried very hard to contain his mounting horror. He wanted to move to take her in his arms and embrace all the hurts away… the loneliness and confusion and helplessness just floating beneath the surface, a buoy bobbing on the water… He stretched out his long fingers to grasp it, but it moved away from him with the waves, just out of reach.
Instead, he went to grasp her hand, his fingers lacing with hers.
"I am so sorry, Anne… You were just a wee thing…" he gave her long ago line back to her, inclining his head towards her, thinking that his voice might break on the words.
Anne chuckled softly in remembrance, and began to slump down in her seat, even closer towards him. If he scrunched down himself, he thought, he could meet her halfway, and ….
Yes. He felt her head drift towards his left shoulder, and it settled itself there.
His throat closed over, thinking his jacket would smell of lilies again now.
For the moment Gilbert tried to process thoughts of a young red headed girl, eyes wide and grey, shunted all about two provinces. Shunted about to uncaring foster folk or indifferent institutions. Whilst he, by that stage, was back in Avonlea, flirting with the girls. He felt the weight of Anne's head on his shoulder even as he staggered under the new weight of her admissions.
"You ask about Katherine…" Anne continued after a time, and though he couldn't see her face he could feel her smile. "And it's like asking me to describe the weather, or the sky, or the sea. There are things that are changeable and there are things that are constant. There are things that were always there but I did not notice them about her until later, and there are things I perhaps discovered, new, as if she wasn't aware of them either… She started off as a teacher; often she was a martinet; she became a mentor, and along the line she became my friend. I owe her so much, Gilbert. I owe her my education and my career. I owe her any faith I have in my own abilities. I would not be at Redmond, I would not be sitting on this train with you trying to get to her now, if not for her…"
Anne shuddered into a sob, stifling it in his sleeve, and he turned his body into her to try to absorb the naked pain of it. Gilbert's own eyes burned at the emotion in her voice. Outside of his family and his fondness for his friends, he wondered if he had ever felt so about anyone. And realised, of course, he did, and she was sitting next to him.
He struggled to keep her afloat amongst her growing misery.
"Did you like Summerside? The Girls' Home?" he asked after a moment, in his desperation, knowing the question was stupid and blundering, and would probably bring on a fresh wave of tears. Instead, amazingly, Anne gave something that may have been a snort and tried hard to be a short little laugh.
"I didn't dislike it…" Anne's tone had become a little wry. She sat up a little and brushed at her tears; he had to fight himself not to insist on helping with the process.
"I felt that the Home was a little like Lowood, actually, though not as draughty and with better food." Anne turned to give a watery smile at him, as if having made a joke, and he looked at her blankly.
"Oh, yes, well, forgive me, that is a Jane Eyre reference. I forgot that you are still bulwarking yourself against the Brontes!"
She had recovered enough to give him an eyeroll, albeit with reddened eyes, and he felt his lips tug in relief.
"Well, Anne, hysterics on the moors and all..." his hazel eyes crinkled at the corners, and his tone continued the tease, to try to drag her away from the undertow. "Shakespeare is one thing, but I just can't come at that. I am trying to convince everyone I am a rational man of science, you know. I even brought the book along to prove it."
She smiled at him in that way of hers; the one where he usually then forgot what his last sentence was.
"Well, you'd be surprised by Jane Eyre. There's not too many moors to moan about but there is a very appropriately gothic mansion."
"See, though, that's not really helping…" he grinned shamelessly, and loved to see some of the light come back to her face.
"Be careful, Mr Blythe! This is my favourite book in all the world we are talking about!"
He groaned excessively, and she shook her head at him in admonishment.
"Fine, then, Gilbert! What's your favourite book? Since obviously we won't be doubling up here as on the sonnets."
He frowned in thought, his lips still smiling.
"I don't actually have one."
She paused, astonished.
"You don't have one? The man who knows Shakespeare and Dickens and Keats and is coming in a respectable second in his Great English Literature course?"
Gilbert gave her a mock glare at the dig, before shrugging his shoulders sheepishly.
"I mean, there are lots of books that I've liked…" he sought some sort of defence for himself. "But I guess… I guess I've never loved anything enough for that kind of declaration…"
His eyes found hers, though if she heard his hidden meaning she didn't acknowledge it.
"Gilbert… a favourite book is a friend, a guide, a talisman… It's a comfort to the soul and a memory of things past. It provides inspiration for how things could be. It's something you can connect with so deeply you feel that the author was writing it about and for you… I couldn't have survived without Jane Eyre. I've lost myself and found myself in it so many times… You must make it your mission to find your favourite, Gilbert. Otherwise I am afraid there's not much hope for you."
She gave him a wry, knowing smile, and he was newly undone by her passionate speech. Gilbert surveyed the girl – no, the woman- who was better and braver than him in every way; in ways he was only just coming to know. This woman he was completely and utterly lost to.
Book or no book, he was afraid there wasn't much hope for him, either.
Summerside Home for Girls
July 1880
Katherine Brooke surveyed the pass list for Queen's Academy in Charlottetown; her own alma mater, and one she remained somewhat idiosyncratically fond of. The results would be known generally tomorrow, published in the newspaper, but teaching staff had been appraised of the standings separately through the post. Moreover, they received the individual scores of each student alongside their standings, which was something the powers that be, in their wisdom, thought rightly unhelpful to be known to the general populous.
Katherine held a similar page in her other hand from the recently incorporated Summerside Academy; only five years old, the newest teaching institution on the Island was not setting itself up as a rival to the one in the capital, but rather as a younger and somewhat overeager sister. There had been felt on their side of the Island an inequality of opportunities for further education, and the time and distance – not to mention expense – for students to relocate to Charlottetown seemed in this day and age to be unfair and unnecessary. Summerside was already a large town with its own fine academic tradition – the High School and its plethora of Pringles had seen to that – and it was the natural choice for a sister school to the stately Queen's in every sense. It would perhaps never gain the reputation, let alone the status and prestige, of the other fine establishment, but it had an enthusiastic young staff, some very fine modern buildings in the post-Confederation, Victorian Gothic revivalist style; and, put bluntly, a Board of Trustees keen to furnish student numbers with the lure of financial scholarships for the top ten per cent of students in the entrance examinations. To that end it shared the same entrance exam as Queen's itself to ensure parity; however, the lists were separate to one another, depending on whether students sat them at Queen's or Summerside.
Anne had been one of around thirty students, amongst those from the High School and the Home, to sit the exams here in Summerside. She had achieved First Ranking on the Summerside pass list, by a long margin. Pleasing, naturally, but unsurprising.
Katherine now compared her score to the ranking on the Queen's list. And then very carefully checked again.
First.
Tied for First.
First out of two hundred to sit the same exams at the academy in Charlottetown.
First on the Queen's list was some young man (typically) from some backwater on the other side of the Island; his name was not important to Katherine, only his score.
Anne's score.
For a moment Katherine allowed the fantasy of Anne attending Queen's Academy in her stead; of holding her head very high indeed knowing she was the absolute first among equals; of mixing with the invigorating company of the most elite students from all over the Island; of the social and cultural doors opened up to the orphan girl who had only known them to close in her face.
It was and could only ever be a fantasy.
There was no money to send Anne to Queen's; to pay a minimum year's tuition and board; to cover the costs of everyday expenses; to cover travel costs during the term breaks. Katherine did not have the money to loan her; she was still paying off the princely sum owed to her uncle for the very same thing, and might still be paying it off, painfully piecemeal, until she was fifty. She did not want that sort of indentured servitude for Anne Shirley.
Conversely, Summerside Academy would fall over themselves for her, waving their scholarship offer in their sprint to gain the equal top student, and from the local Home no less. She would be able to board at the Home in exchange for helping Katherine tutor the younger children, as the just graduated Miss Baker had done. Anne could begin her teaching career and save for whatever she liked; travel, even college, and what she earned would be hers, and she could face the future squarely, and not to shy from it.
Katherine would have the entire day having to congratulate the pampered misters and misses at the High School who had gained a middling place at Queen's or indeed the few who would elect to stay to train at Summerside. In the late afternoon she would make the journey across the town to the Home. A red haired girl, so very changed and yet so not changed these four years, would be waiting with her typical anxiousness, her grey eyes wide, convinced that she had failed spectacularly or, infinitely worse, come out in the middle of the pack. Katherine thought of her face as she shared the news. She might even have smiled in anticipation of it.
"How long were you at Summerside?" he fought for some control against his own tiredness and against the all-too wonderful feeling of her head heavy against his and her body snuggled into his side.
Anne gave a stifled yawn. "Until I was fifteen, as a proper resident, and then I did my teacher's licence in a year – as you did yourself – at the new teaching academy in Summerside, but I travelled back and forth from the Home as a day student, so as to save on board. Katherine tutored me for the entrance exam – which was the same one as for your Queen's College."
Gilbert's brow furrowed in concentration. "Of course. I remember that now. We did our teaching studies in the same year, didn't we? Which means we would have both sat the same entrance exam the school year before?"
Anne paused herself. "Yes, that would be right. Four years ago last year."
A slow but very definite smile was forming on Gilbert's face.
"It's just that… er… I did quite well on that entrance exam," he ventured.
"Well, congratulations to you, Mr Blythe. I did quite well myself, I'll have you know."
He grinned now at the mild affront in her voice, which was all the confirmation he needed.
"Did you ever see the pass list for Queen's that year, Anne?"
"No, Katherine told me vaguely, but I only actually saw the one for Summerside. I wouldn't have known anyone on the Queen's list, anyway. All she said was that a boy from across the Island achieved the same score as me."
Gilbert was still far in front of her regarding this revelation, and he could hardly contain himself. If the cosmos or Fate or Destiny or Providence had ever had a hand in his life at all, it was in him taking a course in Great English Literature at Redmond. But perhaps those wheels had been set in motion so many years before, and he hadn't even known it.
Or she.
"That would have been the top score, then?" he didn't know how he wasn't chuckling in devilish amusement already, perhaps whilst twirling a terrific handlebar moustache.
He felt Anne stir at his words.
"It's just that my teacher told me that someone had matched my score. A girl… from Summerside."
There was another long pause, and then Anne sat back up quickly.
They stared at one another, amazed. The full import of this incredible, beautiful coincidence dawned on them in the simultaneous grins they gave one another.
"Gilbert!" Anne's eyes were shining. "You're kidding me? Really?"
"Yes, really, Anne!" he finally allowed his laughter. Well, I'll be…" his entire face seemed to be beaming. True minds, indeed."
She blushed delightedly, and shook her head in astonishment.
"Well I guess you are as smart as me after all!" he joked.
This deservedly earned him a playful swot on the arm.
"That is a fact you won't be allowed to forget in a hurry!" she giggled, and the sound of it, after her pensive worry and her tears, was a true music to him; a flute, breathy and joyous and pure.
"You know, Anne, this means we're bonded now…" Gilbert's grin continued wide, brilliant and unashamed, and did not fade, particularly when Anne settled herself back down again, against his shoulder.
Anne had fallen asleep. Gilbert inclined his cheek to rest against her hair. It was silky and soft and felt as bewitching as he had long imagined it would. He kept his hands resolutely at his sides, lest they be tempted to wander to those tendrils, to feel the titian tresses ripple through his fingers.
He stared out into the darkness, the elation of the Queen's exam communion now dissipating, leaving him worn and exhausted already, thinking over what Anne had revealed, hardly able to stand to dwell on it. Her history had been presented to him like the lists he loved; the factual outline; the whistle stop tour of various destinations. Bolingbroke…Hopetown… Summerside… Kingsport. Like stations on the train line, or ships she had boarded whose complete passage was unknown.
Gilbert could barely contemplate what lay ahead of them, let alone the story behind the facts and between the lines. What he had heard already was enough to turn his hair grey. Of the pain that still lingered within her pauses; of the gap between the sand of the shore and the sea; in the spaces left by the things she still could not yet bring herself to say.
Chapter Notes
"Perhaps Charlie Sloane had guessed and told his guesses for truth." Anne of the Island (Ch. 28)
*William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act 5 Sc 1)
**Psalm 24:4 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death'
***From Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) The May Queen
He was indeed Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death.
****John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwoods Magazine (1818). Lockhart had also referred to Keats' Endymion in the same astonishingly scathing review as 'imperturbable drivelling idiocy'.
*****Anne of Avonlea (Ch. 7)
******Anne of Green Gables (Ch. 5)